


Protective

by the_authors_exploits



Series: Memories Divided by Pain [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, momentary suicide thoughts, someone gets their fingers chopped off...., there may be a hug....there's lots of feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 10:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8324383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_authors_exploits/pseuds/the_authors_exploits
Summary: [prəˈtektiv] adjective1. capable of or intended to protect someone or something.2. having or showing a strong wish to keep someone safe from harm





	

It wasn’t a betrayal, but Damian feels like it was; they couldn’t have known that he knew of Jason, that he met Jason, that Jason disappeared from his life with barely an explanation.

But the fact they never told him; that they knew. That Father knew, that Drake knew, that Grayson knew. That they knew the Red Hood was Jason months before Damian arrived, that they didn’t tell Damian what to expect, that they acted like Red Hood was an enemy.

Jason will never be an enemy; Damian knows this. Damian believes this. Jason is his friend.

So he stays quiet, beyond the reasonings of not wanting to expose his history with Jason or not wanting to hurt them, but also because he doesn’t trust them; they did not tell him, before the warehouse, before Red Hood shrieked and Damian went running.

They sat him down afterwards; well, Father did. He said, “that was Jason; that was the second Robin”, and Damian grit his teeth to keep from lashing out. How dare he… How dare he not tell Damian.

That Jason was alive; how dare he leave Jason alone…

How dare he…

“He’s dangerous, Damian, and I expect you not to ever face him alone; do you understand?”

He understood; he understood fear and hate. Neither one would ever be directed at Jason.

“He hurt Tim really bad when he resurfaced a few months ago.”

But Drake had been steps behind Damian, looking as worried as Damian; he didn’t hold a grudge, especially not when he knelt and talked softly to Jason, calmed him down, enough for Jason to slip out a window before Father could take him into custody.

And now, as Damian eyes Drake across the living room, he wonders…

“Do you blame Jason?”

Drake lifts his head from the paperwork he was going over. “What?”

“Do you hate Jason for what he did to you?”

Drake scratches at the back of his head, then at a scar on his arm. “N…not really. I mean, I know he shouldn’t have done it, and I know the Pit Madness doesn’t excuse his actions, but he was dead and he came back and no one helped him process that. No one talked him through stuff, no one sat him down and told him he was important, or that he could still belong and have a purpose.” Drake shrugs, picks up his pen again. “I know what he did was wrong, but at the same time… I get it.”

Maybe Drake isn’t as awful as Damian first thought; all the same, Damian is careful.

When Joker escapes Arkham, again, the panic seeps through him; he doesn’t know. He knows Jason died, he knows the Joker hurt him, he hasn’t heard what happened… But he saw the wounds and knows the scars, and that’s enough for Damian to fear. He doesn’t know where Jason is, the teenager having disappeared shortly after Damian helped him back to his safe house a few weeks ago, but he knows this can’t end well.

And he’s right; several days after Joker’s begun his rampage does he surface again.

_“Batman, Red Hood was spotted in a warehouse on the docks with Joker! He’s got a bomb!”_

“Who?” Damian asks, before he can stop himself, and Father reiterates the question.

_“Hood does; he has Joker tied up and he’s threatening to blow up the warehouse.”_

With both of them inside; Damian runs. He steps over rooftops and gutters, rolls from the roof to the ground, he launches over a fence on the ground and then climbs up a wall to keep going across the rooftops.

 _“Do not engage,”_ Batman calls over the comms, and Damian pauses long enough to glance at Drake across the street; he too has paused and he glances at Damian.

Damian takes a deep breath and steps forward again; this won’t end well. Jason had been doing better, if just slightly, and Damian now worries all that hard work will be gone.

And it’ll be Joker’s fault, just like everything else has always been Joker’s fault.

Damian comes upon the docks only moments before Tim, racing over to Nightwing’s side; Nightwing is ducked down behind some crates, but Damian doesn’t care to crouch. He stands shoulders heaving as he sucks in breaths.

“Are they in there?”

The warehouse is small, the windows lit up, and Damian can just barely make out two shadows, one who paces frantically and another that shakes—probably with laughter, the Joker. Nightwing nods.

“Hood led me here; he caught me on the south side, we sparred a bit, and then he led me here. He’s got the detonator in one hand and they’re both exceptionally close to the blast zone.”

“Jason wouldn’t do this,” Damian mutters, and Red Robin eyes him with the slightest bit of a suspicious glint.

“What does he want?” Tim crouches next to Dick. “It’s a basic hostage situation, so he has to have a demand.”

“What does he always want in regards to the Joker?” Dick answers.

Damian furrows his brows, watches the garage door be slammed up and open and there, silhouetted by the bright lights behind him, stands Jason in his vigilante getup. He’s missing his hood, and his muscles shake; in one hand is a gun, and in the other is a small box—the detonator, and Damian’s foot twitches a centimeter forward.

“He wants me to kill him,” Father speaks, having appeared behind them, and Damian doesn’t turn; he keeps his gaze on Jason, Jason who’s screaming out into the dark of night.

“Him or me!” he cries. “Kill me to prevent me from blowing us both us, or kill him and you’ll never see me again!”

Either way, Jason disappears; he dies again in a bomb, he dies again because Father kills him, or he disappears forever like at Ra’s compound. Jason reaches up for the garage handle, to pull it down, and he cries out once more.

“Him or me!”

Damian hears the panic in his voice, the urgency, the anger and hurt; Tim and Dick and Father are forming a plan, to talk Jason down, to save Joker and Jason, to stop him. Nightwing offers throwing a batarang to shatter the lights, and Red Robin offers to drop from the roof while Batman takes the front; Damian’s had enough, especially when Jason goes to close the garage door.

Damian goes running; his cape flutters, and he ignores his family calling out for him; Jason has stepped away from the door, letting it shut on its own time, letting gravity pull it down, and Damian slips and slides under the small gap just before it slams shut. He tumbles back to his feet, heaving lightly, and Jason looks at him with wide eyes; the Joker laughs, cackles, hooting and howling.

Damian hates him; “You’re not going to hurt me,” he says when Jason raises his gun and aims it at his head. “I know you are not going to hurt me.”

He lost his comm somewhere in his run to get in here, ditching it onto the cold dark pavement; it’s just him and Jason.

“Shut up!” Jason clutches the detonator close; he looks exhausted, shaking.

Damian eyes Joker momentarily. “You’ve been having nightmares.”

“You shouldn’t be in here!”

“You want Father to kill the Joker; to…avenge you.”

“To save everyone!” Jason cries, and his gun hand shakes; he’d gone to the doctor after getting his hand injured, and it had healed almost fully, though he most likely would need physical therapy and his grip had been weak for a while. “He’s hurt too many, taken too many!”

“I know…”

The Joker wheezes on the floor, and he’s suddenly got his arms free, clawing across the ground. “It’s just so much fun! Yes, kill us! Kill us all again, Hoodsie!” He had obviously been beaten, one eye swollen shut, his lip bleeding, clothing torn. “Try the bomb again! It worked so well before! It always does! Kill another little birdie!”

“Shut up,” Damian barely intones, though his sword sings as he unsheathes it and slices it across the ground; Joker’s fingers go rolling across the warehouse floor, completely decapitated. Damian flings the blood from his sword, sheathes it at his hip, and stares up at Jason.

Joker shrieks, clutching his hand, interspersed with high pitched laughter that Damian blocks out.

“Shut up; you’ll be fine. The doctors can reattach your fingers if you get medical attention in time; though I doubt you’ll be able to pull a trigger for a while.” Damian tips his head to the side, still eyeing Jason, especially now that his limbs have slackened; the gun is aimed at the floor, his grip loose. “Nor do I think you’ll be holding any crowbars soon.”

Jason goes to his knees, curls into himself.

“He will not harm you for a while.”

Jason’s breath hitches, and Damian knows they don’t have much time left before everyone else comes crashing in; Jason presses his hand clutched around the detonator to his eyes, and his shoulders shake. “But he can; this is just temporary. You’re just like _him._ You’re just like Bruce…”

He doesn’t know how that makes him feel; pride to have broken the Al Ghul grip on him, or disappointment that Jason doesn’t see him for his friend, but as an enemy… “Someday, he may be gone; someday, he may stop killing. For now, this is all I can offer you.”

Jason looks at the detonator, as if considering, and then down at the gun; Damian steps forward.

“You will not blow this place up because I am here.” Damian knows it’s true; Jason will not hurt him. Damian has every faith in his friend. “And I will not let you take your life.”

Damian reaches forward when Jason goes to press the gun to his temple, and Damian twists it expertly out of his grip; Jason could hold it tight, but he lets it go. Damian won’t let Jason hurt himself.

“You do not want to die.” The lightbulb pops, shattering with a piece of bat shaped metal, and Damian goes to his knees and shifts his cape over Jason’s bowed being. “Your purpose is not yet complete; I will help you achieve it, one day. One day, we will be rid of his danger; but for now, I can only offer you a reprieve.”

Father barrels through the front door, and Red Robin drops from the skylight, and Damian stays still; he hears them moving, feels Drake approach, lets him fit a hand between his and Jason’s body, pry the detonator from Red Hood.

He doesn’t care what they say; right now, he cannot be careful. He has to care for Jason, so he does; he lets Jason know he’s not alone, not now and not in the future.

They will do this together.


End file.
